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Paralyzed Man In "Coma" For 23 Years Was Actually Conscious 25

Posted by samzenpus from the I-have-an-itch-all-over dept.
overcaffein8d writes "A man who was paralyzed and thought to be comatose for 23 years had his nightmare ended. A hi-tech scan showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally. From the article: 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr. Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegetative state. "I dreamed myself away," he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer. Mr. Houben said: "I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me — it was my second birth. I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead."'"

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Paralyzed Man In "Coma" For 23 Years Was Actually Conscious More

Paralyzed Man In "Coma" For 23 Years Was Actually Conscious

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  • I know I know it's serious.

  • This is a good example of why the whole idea of withdrawing life support is wrong - under other circumstances, this man may have been simply left to die from dehydration or starvation.

    Without debating the matter of killing expensive patients with poor outcomes chances, society should at least have the balls to treat them as well as it would insist on for a pet if it's going to kill them anyway.

    If courts are going to wade into this, surely they have as much a duty to prevent cruel and unusual 'healthcare' as

  • So how is it, that they decided to perform the "hi-tech scan" after 23 years?! That's absolutely ridiculous. What, did the doctors get bored one day and decide to finally pay attention to the human mantle-piece?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tresho ( 1000127 )
      So how is it, that they decided to perform the "hi-tech scan" after 23 years?! The original article talked about "state of the art" imaging. The state of medical arts is always changing. I imagine it has changed HUGELY in 23 years.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fallen Kell ( 165468 )
      Think back to 1985 or 1986... These kinds of scans simply didn't exist. Computer use was only just starting to happen in hospitals. CAT scans and MRI scans were just finally making their way into most hospitals....
  • These are diagnoses of exclusion. Physicians have to 'rule out', i.e., be sure, that nothing else is going on, when making this type of diagnosis. This is epistemologically tricky.

  • I Call BS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @02:40PM (#30205072) Journal

    Actually, I call troll.

    The article uses coma and PVS (persistent vegetative state) interchangeably. They're not. And the symptoms described do not belong to either of those, but rather to "locked in state". Since the article makes these two glaring errors, as well as the following, I call BS on the author and Mail Online. The difference between these three states is well understood by the neurologists that would have diagnosed him after having performed the test far more accurate in differentiating these, the same EEG that's been around for far longer than this man's problems. There'd be no reason to use a far more expensive and far less accurate test.

    The article is a troll, intended solely to push peoples' buttons regarding with regards to the life support and health care cost issues. If I'm wrong about it being a troll, fine, but I'm not wrong about it being a fake. The details show that it was written with no understanding of the subject, which would not have happened if actual neurologists were consulting on a real case and were interviewed for a story. There's too many problems for them to be able to weasel out of it by claiming there were 'some mistakes'.
     

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NervousWreck ( 1399445 )
      1-ignorance is not malice. 2-The fact that a post will lead to political discussion does not make it troll I call flamebait if anything.

      • 2. Flamebait, perhaps, but "lead to political discussion" is a bit generous. I doubt the result was intended to be discussion.

        1. One does not write and publish such a specific article out of ignorance. In particular one does not do so stating that medical professionals scored a test wrong leading to the error when they would have long before performed an EEG that would have given the correct result. The doctor who supposedly done the 'high tech brain scan' would not have made this error either. One does not

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by DarkIye ( 875062 )
          Additionally to the 'political discussion' point, what stories like this do actually help make any real discussion very difficult because people get stoked up with emotions, rather than thinking about facts. Consequently now, a small bunch of people, when thinking who to vote for, will see a candidate's policy on 'reducing healthcare spending' and immediately think 'WE CAN'T HAVE MORE PEOPLE LYING IN THEIR BEDS FOR 23 YEARS, OH GOD HOW HORRIBLE', and not vote for someone who might be a totally sensible cand

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      James Randi calls BS too. In the video that was released, the coma guy was shown assisted in his communicating. His caretaker holds his hand while it rapidly types out his messages. Check out This Cruel Farce Has to Stop [randi.org] (http://www.randi.org)

  • Skeptical of claims using faciliated communication (Score:3, Informative)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Tuesday November 24, 2009 @03:16PM (#30218000) Homepage
    The individual in question is typing by aid of "facilitated communication" where by an assistant helps them type the words. There has been a lot of criticism of this method before. It was attempted with severely autistic kids about a decade ago and later worked showed that it was likely that the messages were coming almost completely from the facilitators not the kids. See http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/really_this_guy_is_conscious.php [scienceblogs.com]
    • Why be skeptical? I hear it works every bit as good as a Ouija board! (And on pretty much the same principle.)

  • TFA states he was in the car crash in 1983... if he was in this state for 23 years why are we just hearing about this now?

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